Page 236 - Communication Cultural and Media Studies The Key Concepts

SUBJECTIVITY

the ways this is achieved is via media exposure. Although disapproving
stories in the press may work to create and legitimise subcultures (see
Cohen, 1980), approving reports ‘are the subcultural kiss of death’
(Thornton, 1995: 6). Punk’s initial impact was reported in the media
in terms similar to a moralpanic, but before too long punk fashion
had spread and the appearance of punks themselves on London
postcards signalled the process of recuperation as described by Hebdige
had begun.
More recent theorists of subcultures such as Thornton (1995: 3)
argue that communities are being formed not so much out of
resistance, but out of shared tastes and interests. Thornton uses the
term ‘taste cultures’ to describe the grouping of individuals who listen
to dance music and go to raves and dance clubs. She insists that
although taste cultures, like subcultures, are bound together through
certain commonalities, they are less reliant on the models of resistance
put forward by Hebdige. Here, music, drugs and leisure (dance clubs/
parties) rather than style are central to meaning-making, with
opposition directed towards mainstream popular music, rather than
more generally towards the parent culture.
The move from subcultures to taste cultures recognises that
marginal communities are not necessarily always concerned with
resistance. Whilst Hebdige (1988) himself declared the death of
subcultural significance along with that of the punk movement, studies
of the relationship between identity and leisure choices continue (see
Gelder and Thornton, 1997). What is apparent in more recent work is
that style and leisure are still employed as symbols in youth practices,
and are done so as marks of distinction amongst various taste cultures
or scenes. Resistance is useless.
See also: Bricolage, Style

Further reading: Gelder and Thornton (1997); Thornton (1995)

SUBJECTIVITY

Selfhood. Cultural studies was perhaps more interested in subjectivity
than in culture during the 1970s and after. It became a central focus of
attention during this period for political and cultural reasons, to do
with the rise of identity politics. At the same time, structuralism and
its aftermath suggested that subjectivity was not a natural but historical
and cultural phenomenon, produced out of the resources of language

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